FOM are entirely legally correct to pursue copyright infringement. But it doesn’t stop it from being a futile waste of time and resources. I fail to see how F1 clips appearing on the Internet damages FOM at all.

In fact, I think high profile publicity can only be good for the sport – especially when the message is: “Look how safe our cars are!”

FOM must have some twisted reasoning why F1 fans being able to see short replays of races on the Internet is bad for their business.

I don’t believe for one second that anyone has ever decided not to watch the live broadcast of a race thinking, “Why bother when I can watch short, low quality, blurry video on YouTube later?”

Internet video can bring F1 into contact with young, fresh, new audience members – the lifeblood of any sport. It allows people in countries with no F1 coverage to see the sport. It allows those of us in countries where the broadcasters ruin the races with advert breaks to catch up on what we missed.

But most of all it’s utterly, utterly futile. Already there are new copies of the Kubica crash back on YouTube, and countless other websites are carrying the footage.

Instead of wasting their time stopping the sports fans from enjoying F1 in a way that does not hurt FOM one iota, they should be working on offering them a high quality, high resolution F1 broadcast over the internet. I’d certainly pay good money for it, because I for one am sick of ITV’s abysmal coverage. (Except for Martin Brundle).

17 comments on FOM makes Youtube remove Kubica crash videos

Totally agree with every word. And FOM cannot even use the public’s apparent lust for crash footage as an excuse – there are plenty of videos of Senna’s death at Imola out there. They would be better employed getting rid of those.

As usual, the FOM completely misunderstands the implications of the information age. Even the music companies now understand that music videos are going to be freely available to all across the internet whether they like it or not…

It’s a real shame that FOM haven’t embraced the internet yet. Their website is abysmal, and beyond that, all they do is ban, ban, ban. Bernie considers himself a great businessman, I think not so. There is a lot of money to be made by him from showing clips online, and even live viewing (droool), but the cantankerous old git just won’t allow it.

Also agree with Clive above. If anything, FOM should be trying to remove sensitive footage (like Ratzenberger and Senna) rather than (thank whoever-you-like) Kubica’s escape.

I think this is FOM’s logic: We can’t let the YouTube videos proliferate. The replay value of races decreases because of YouTube. Why? Because if I were a viewer, I wouldn’t bother waiting for the parts of the race I like. I just get it on YouTube. As has been said, people like the crashes in F1, not F1 itself. FOM’s thought: If you wanna see your crashes, just watch the F1 race. With less people watching the replays, the TV stations find less value in showing F1. So either they pay Bernie less for F1, or just stop showing it altogether. Less money for Bernie.

It’s completely absurd, but to FOM, completely logical. Besides, even without these other fans, they still make an absurd sum of money. Why? F1 is a rich person’s sport. As long as rich people like F1 (and/or the glamour of F1), F1 (and therefore FOM and therefore Bernie) will still make unbelievable profits, even if not as many other people like it.

as was stated above, clips like these can attract new fans, also fans of every other sport get to share there clips so y not f1 fans too?
also, if half the races were as good as that one then more ppl would bother to watch!

Why just the Kubica crash? There’s shedloads of Formula One footage out there, recent and old, on Youtube. I definitely agree that if the FIA/FOM actually bothered to move into the digital age and start offering race downloads (like Moto GP already do) via the web, then this sort of thing could be cut down. And whilst they are at it, a proper archive of old races would stop folk searching for stuff like Mansell vs. Senna 1992 at Monaco.

Robert McKay is spot-on with his suggestions. In fact, a sufficiently high-quality service could warrant a small-but-significant subscription price (especially if lower-quality versions or clips were freely available). Moves like this make the “YouTube generation” (as I hear people my age and younger are called) think the FOM is high-handed and snobbish, and therefore much less likely to watch. And of course, the safety message gets missed.

I agree with every word about FOM’s attitudes.Their 20th century attitude to the internet is riduculous.Not allowing F1 to be shown on the web means no exposure of F1 to the “Youtube Generation” and a lot of angry F1 fans.Its like a football team refusing to win matches because they don’t like the type of football being used..ITV’s coverage isn’t great,but im relieved F1 is still on free,terrestrial TV.Itv stuck by F1 when it was at its very worst Schumacher dominance.